Vectors

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Patrick Culliton

ROOTED TO THE SPOT IN WHICH I DON'T APPLY

She wears summer, a birdon her clavicle, and combsthe day thin with rowdyarms. Triangular and sailing,she unlocks the pages of distance.Pipers mobile her solitary umbrella.How she stays when a storm turns

over the bay. The slow knife,the kiwi, and the rubber band wrist.Lightning pings, clouds change gowns.Warning pulls the plug and the sand drainsof goers. How she remains,silent and right, her facelit by the sun’s slow soap.

Patrick Culliton lives in Chicago. His poems have appeared, or will soon, in Coconut, Conduit, The Hat, The Journal, jubilat, Rabbit Light Movies, Third Coast, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a 2009 Individual Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council. He teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago and has a chapbook forthcoming from Octopus Books in Spring 2010.